I mean
that I am very desirous that our relation--the relation which we both
have found so helpful--should continue. I am sure that we have, in these
months which we have spent together, sufficient evidence that our souls
vibrate in perfect harmony. I need you, dear friend; your understanding
of my soul's desires is so sympathetic; I feel that you so complement
and fill out, as it were, my spiritual self. I need you to encourage, to
inspire, to assist me in the noble work to which I am devoting all my
strength."
She looked at him, now, with an expression of amazement. "Do you mean--"
she faltered in confusion while the red blood colored her cheeks.
"Yes," he answered, confidently. "I am asking you to be my wife. Not,
however," he added hastily, "in the common, vulgar understanding of that
relation. I am offering you, dear friend, that which is vastly higher
than the union of the merely animal, which is based wholly upon the
purely physical and material attraction. I am proposing marriage of our
souls--a union, if you please, of our higher intellectual and spiritual
selves. I feel, indeed, that by those higher laws which the vulgar,
beastlike minds are incapable of recognizing, we are already one.
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